- The number of hairs on Charlie Brown’s head changes throughout the show. In some scenes, he has three hairs on the back of his head, and in others he has no hair at all.

- Composer Vince Guaraldi was invited to write the music for the special after a TV producer heard one of his songs while riding in a cab.

- Lucy calls Charlie Brown “Charlie” in a scene right before she talks about the commercialization of Christmas. This is the only time she ever calls him by his first name only in any Peanuts special. In all the other specials, she always calls him by his complete name – Charlie Brown.

- TV execs were sure “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would flop miserably. They didn’t like Guaraldi’s music, were concerned about Linus quoting the Bible, and wanted a canned laugh track to accompany the animation.

- The name of the Charlie Brown Christmas song that most people associate with the special is “Christmas Time is Here.”

- 50% of all TVs were tuned in to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on the night it first aired in 1965.

How cold is it at the North Pole?
During winter, the temperature at the North Pole averages from about -45 to -15 degrees Fahrenheit (-43 to -26 degrees Celsius). During summer, the temperature climbs up to a cool 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius).

If it’s noon in Tokyo, what time is it at the North Pole?
Good question. In most places on Earth, local time is determined by longitude and time of day is more-or-less synchronized to the position of the sun in the sky (for example, at midday the sun is roughly at its highest). But this method of determining time doesn’t work at the North Pole, where the sun rises and sets only once per year, and all lines of longitude (hence all time zones) converge. So there is no assigned time zone at the North Pole. (Is this why Santa can defy time and fly all around the world in a single night?)

Does the sun still rise in the east and set in the west at the North Pole?
When the sun is visible in the polar sky (during the summer months), it appears to move in a clockwise circle above the horizon. The sun rises only once and sets once every YEAR at the North Pole.

Other than Santa’s Village, what other buildings are there at the North Pole?
The South Pole has some permanent scientific outposts, but the North Pole has no permanent structures. That’s because it’s in the middle of the Arctic Ocean and is surrounded by water that is and sea ice that is always shifting.

What animals live at the North Pole?
Other than Santa’s reindeer, very few animals have ever been sighted near the North Pole. The few that have been spotted near the top of the earth include the ringed seal and Arctic foxes, as well as birds such as the Black-legged Kittiwake, the Snow Bunting, and the Northern Fulmar.

Is Santa’s North Pole the only North Pole?
In addition to the geographic North Pole, which is the northernmost point on Earth, there is also a Magnetic North Pole, as well as cities named North Pole in Alaska, New York, Idaho and Oklahoma.

According to Wikipedia, the plant’s association with Christmas began in Mexico in the 16th century, where legend tells of a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. The tale goes that the child was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson “blossoms” sprouted from the weeds and became beautiful poinsettias.

Poinsettias, known as the Christmas Eve Flower (Flor de Buena Noche) in Mexico, slowly became associated with the celebration of Christ’s birth. The plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Franciscan friars in Mexico started including the plants in their Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, and the plants came to the United States in 1825.

They were introduced here by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and the first United States Minister to Mexico, and that’s how the plants, whose scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima, came to be known as poinsettias.

Their rise in popularity in the United States and around the world was promoted by the Ecke family of California, which started selling the plants in the early 1900s and developed a way of grafting poinsettias to make a fuller, more compact plant. This secret allowed them to have a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market until the 1990s. They also promoted the plants by sending free poinsettias to TV stations to display on air and by appearing on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials.

Today the association between poinsettias and Christmas is well established and will undoubtedly be with us for a long time to come.

In its beginnings, the Yule log was burned as a celebration of the winter solstice. Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after in Scandinavia, as this was the coldest and darkest time of the year. And though the Yule log is named from this Scandinavian tradition, the practice of burning a special log during the winter months was a tradition in many countries across the world.

When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the time of the Winter Solstice during the fourth century, the Yule log tradition continued, but the light from the burning log represented the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun.

Traditionally on or about Christmas Eve, a big log was brought into the home or a larger gathering place. People would sing and tell stories while children danced and played. The log was even decorated, and food and wine were placed upon it as offerings. It was also a way of starting the New Year with a fresh start as a person’s mistakes and shortcomings were burned in the flame of the log. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. The log was never allowed to burn completely; leftover pieces of it were kept in the house to start next years log and also to bring good luck to the home. It was believed those pieces would protect the home from fire, lightning or other acts of nature. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good and spread at the roots of trees, vines and sprinkled upon gardens and crops to ensure a good harvest.

Remember the scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the Whos hold hands in a circle and sing? The title of that song is “Fahoo Forays,” and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because the words are made up. Dr. Seuss invented some of the words of the song and tried to make them sound like classical Latin. Seuss was so successful that some people thought it was real Latin and wrote the studio to ask for a translation.

In A Year Without A Santa Claus, if you look closely when the little girl is writing the word Christmas with a crayon during the Blue Christmas song, you’ll notice that the letters seem to appear before she actually writes them.

The Grinch has blue eyes – but only after his heart grows while he’s standing on the top of Mt. Crumpet. Before that, his eyes are red.

June Foray, who was the voice of little Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was also the voice of the teacher in Frosty the Snowman and the drummer boy’s mother in The Little Drummer Boy.

In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Hermey is the only elf who doesn’t have pointy ears.

- The only time Lucy ever calls Charlie Brown just “Charlie” in a Peanuts special is just before she discusses the commercialization of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Thereafter, she always calls him Charlie Brown .

By the mid 1800‘s the glass-blowers of Lauscha began to produce hand-blown glass ornaments to mimic the fruits and nuts the wealthy were hanging on their trees. Long known for the quality of their glassware (medicine bottles, barometers, marbles and eye glasses) the glass-blowers expanded the ornament business into a cottage industry with the men doing the actual blowing of the ornaments, the women doing the silvering of the insides (early in the industry with either lead or mercury, then later on with a mixture of sugar-water and silver nitrate) and the children painting the outside. Thus began the tradition of the beautiful glass ornaments that Germany became famous for.

Lovely glass spheres aren’t the only German Christmas ornaments that valued by collectors. Dresden began producing gaily painted, embossed paper ornaments. Decorations of pressed tin with brightly lithographed pictures were being produced in other parts of Germany and thin strips of metal called “angel hair” began to show up on trees around the country. This “angel hair” is what we now lovingly call “icicles”. Ornaments were also made out of wood, walnut shells, pewter and wax.

Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert (a native of Germany) introduced the glass ornaments to England and by the 1870‘s German Christmas ornaments were being exported to Great Britain. Ten years later, F.W. Woolworth (the American Five & Dime giant) discovered the lovely glass ornaments during a trip to Europe and began importing them to the United States.

Though the popularity of the ornaments declined during both WWI and WWII, Germany still imports some ornaments to the United States every year. German Christmas ornaments, especially the older ones are still valued by collectors. The most popular German Christmas ornament shapes are Santa and Mrs. Claus (or St. Nick), Mary and Joseph, rocking horses, soldiers, pinecones and, of course, the German Christmas Pickle.

Of the many contributions that the German culture has made to modern society, perhaps one of the most beautiful and enduring is that of the Christmas tree and decorations.

- Sherry Law

The first Christmas Advent wreath was invented in the 1830s by Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Protestant parson who ran an orphanage in in Hamburg, Germany. Wichern made a wooden ring and affixed red and white candles on one side of it to help the children count the days until Christmas. During each service of daily prayer, a child would light one candle, until on Christmas Eve all of them would be illuminated. It is thought that children liked this ring so much that they decorated it with evergreen twigs. Later the number of candles was reduced to four and evergreen boughs became an important component of the rings.

The evergreen branches represent everlasting life brought through Jesus Christ, and the circular shape of the wreath represents God himself, with no beginning and no end.

Typically, three of the candles in an advent wreath are violet-colored, and one is rose-colored, but some choose to use all purple or all blue candles. When used in household devotion, one candle is lit on the first evening of Advent, which falls on a Saturday. Each Saturday thereafter during Advent another candle is lit. Some wreaths have a large white candle in the center which is lit on Christmas Day to signify Christ’s birth.

The tradition of Advents wreaths took a while to catch on in Germany and spread throughout Europe, but by the time German immigrants came to America, they brought this tradition with them. Evergreen wreaths without candles also became a popular symbol of the holidays. Now it’s a household tradition for many families around the world to have a wreath made from evergreen hanging upon the front door of their home during the holidays.

One legend surrounding the origins of the Christmas stockings features Odin, the principle god of Norse mythology and his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. The legend says that each year, during the Yule season, Odin would lead a great hunt. It goes on to state that children would place their boots near the chimney and leave them filled with hay, sugar, carrots and other treats to satisfy the hungry horse after the day’s hunt. Odin would then replace the food that Sleipnir ate with small gifts or candy to thank the children for their kindness and generosity.

Another legend involves Saint Nicholas and the three daughters of an poverty-stricken nobleman. Though the man and his family had once been happy and prosperous, they had fallen on hard times. Bad business decisions and the wife’s illness and subsequent death had led to a decline in the families fortune. By the time the daughter reached the age to wed the family was living in a small cottage and the father was devastated to realize that his daughters would not be able to marry, due to the lack of dowries. Though the villagers were sympathetic to the man’s plight, they knew he was proud and would not accept charity, even to salvage his daughters’ futures.

As he was passing through the small town, Saint Nicholas happened to hear the villagers talking about the sad plight of the girls and their father. Being the generous saint that he was, he wanted to help. Waiting until nightfall, he peered into the family’s windows and saw the girls freshly washed stockings hanging by the fireplace to dry. After the family was asleep, he snuck into the house and removed three bags of gold coins from his pouch. He placed a bag of coins in each of the girls’ stockings and left.

When the girls and their father arose in the morning, they found the bags of coins and their joyous voices could be heard far and wide. It is said that the girls were all married and they, as well as their father, lived happily ever-after.

The re-telling of this story led children to begin hanging their stocking by the fireplace or leaving their shoes outside the door, hoping that they too might be the recipient of gifts from Saint Nicholas.

The hanging of Christmas stockings remains one of Christmas’ more popular traditions. While it is clear that the Christmas stocking’s history will remain a mystery, hanging stockings on Christmas Eve is a custom is here to stay.

According to several sites spread across the Internet, the German Christmas Pickle is a “very ancient Christmas eve tradition in Germany.” Supposedly generations of German parents would hide an ornament shaped like a pickle somewhere deep within the branches of their Christmas tree after all of the other ornaments had been hung. The first child to find the ornament the next morning got an extra present from St. Nick. If the first person to find the pickle was an adult, they were supposed to have good luck during the course of the next year.

When you look closely at the legend, however, it appears to fall apart. First, children in Germany traditionally open their gifts on Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning and St Nick generally visits on either the 5th or 6th of December. Both of these facts would make it impossible for the first child to see the pickle on Christmas morning to get an extra present from St Nick. But even more importantly is the fact that few, if any, native Germans have ever even heard of the tradition. Those that have apparently learned about it from either Americans or German friends who learned of it while visiting America.

So where did the legend of the German Christmas Pickle come from? One popular story being related across the Internet deals with a Bavarian-born Civil War soldier being captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. In poor health, starving and fearing death, he is said to have begged one of the guards for a pickle. The guard found the poor man a pickle, which miraculously revived him and allowed him to live long enough to return to his family. Once there, he is said to have started the tradition of hiding the pickle among the boughs of the Christmas tree each year.

Regardless of whether this is the origin of the German Christmas Pickle or not, the fact remains that Germans do not claim the tradition, and though it is a cute and unusual legend, the German Christmas Pickle tradition appears to be a total fabrication.

About.com says “Urban legends are popular stories alleged to be true which spread from person to person via oral or written communication, “ and that they “tend to arise spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single point of origin.” The legend of the German Christmas Pickle definitely seems to fall into the category of an urban legend. And like other urban legends, the who and why is probably destined to remain a mystery.

So how did this tradition get started? Canada is widely credited with issuing the first Christmas stamp. In December 1898, Canada issued a 2-cent stamp celebrating the introduction of imperial penny postage and inscribed with the words “XMAS 1898.” But it wasn’t really released to celebrate the holidays. Rather, the Xmas inscription came about quite accidentally. Postmaster William Mulock commented to Queen Victoria that the stamp should be released in November “to honor the Prince” (i.e., the Prince of Wales, who was born in November). But when he could see she was not at all pleased with the idea and asked which prince he was referring to, Mulock replied, “Why, the Prince of Peace, ma’am”. Hence, when the stamp was issued in December, it bore not only the image of a world map, but also the words “XMAS 1898″ at the bottom.

A few other countries issued some type of Christmas stamp in the 1930s and ’40s (some without holiday images and some to raise money for a specific cause), but it wasn’t until 1943 that Hungary issued the first Christmas-themed stamp that was sold specifically as a holiday stamp to be used on seasonal mailings.

The United States didn’t issue its first Christmas stamp until 1962. It was a 4-cent stamp that featured a wreath, two candles, and the words “Christmas 1962″. Earlier stamps that had conveyed a holiday spirit had proved popular during the holidays in previous years, such as the 1958 Forest Conservation stamp showing a deer in a clearing in the woods and the 1960 stamp showing a stylized green tree resembling a fir, commemorating the 5th World Forest Congress. So the post office was anticipating a large interest in the first Christmas stamp. They ordered 350 million copies, the largest number ever produced up until that time for a special stamp. But it wasn’t enough. When the initial supply ran out, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had to work around the clock to meet the demand. By the end of the 1962 holiday season, one billion of the first Christmas stamps were sold.

The US Postal Service has issued new Christmas stamps every year since then, and now it’s also possible to create your own personalized USPS stamps for the holidays with online services that make it easy to use your own photos and images.